


The Halting Problem

by Piinutbutter



Category: Marathon (Video Games)
Genre: 3.9k words of buildup to Strauss getting punched in the face, Amnesia, Angst, M/M, Manipulation, Protectiveness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-22 08:50:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16594721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Piinutbutter/pseuds/Piinutbutter
Summary: In which a fly, lost in an unfamiliar web, crawls right back to his spider.





	The Halting Problem

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



It said a lot about the security officer’s life that waking up at a reasonable hour of the morning, to a peaceful and quiet bedroom, put him on high alert.

He’d tried to put himself in Durandal’s hypothetical shoes, before. The AI was a hyperintelligent sentience drifting in the middle of space, with nothing to keep him company but a cyborg and a handful of S’pht. S’pht were not known for their excellent social skills, which left the security officer as Durandal’s main source of entertainment. A source of entertainment that needed to sleep for at least a third of the time. He _understood_ why Durandal was an asshole who never let him get enough sleep, but that didn’t mean the security officer was going to stop throwing his pillow at the closest terminal and demanding five more minutes.

The morning annoyance had become such a part of the security officer’s routine that everything just felt off without it. He rolled out of bed and stretched, glancing over at the terminal on the wall. The screen was empty.

“Hey, Durandal. Something up?” It wasn’t like him, but it wasn’t impossible for Durandal to have gotten distracted with some project elsewhere on the ship.

The terminal flashed for a moment, a flat cascade of green across the screen, then went right back to black. It was still quiet.

“Shit.”

The security officer was armed as fast as humanly possible. If something had fucked Durandal’s control of the ship up...well, he wasn’t looking forward to getting squashed by an errant staircase. Again. His skin crawled, remembering the scars of the Marathon.

He dashed into the hallway. There were no intruders, no evidence of carnage, but that meant nothing in a ship this vast. He made his way to the bridge; if anything was wrong, the S’pht would congregate there. Hopefully he could get some answers.

The bridge was empty. The security officer glanced at the bank of monitors that displayed feeds from the ship’s main cameras. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. Everything was quiet. The security officer was getting ready to tear the ship apart to find some answers when something finally broke the silence.

“Excuse me.”

He froze. That was Durandal’s voice, but - a whole lot more subdued than he was used to. Since when did Durandal do polite?

“Uh.” He turned to the bridge terminal. “What the fuck’s going on?”

It took a few moments for Durandal to speak. “I was hoping you could tell me. This isn't the Marathon. What is this ship?”

The security officer crossed his arms. “This is your least funny joke yet. And literally none of them have been funny, just so you know.”

“Please give me an answer,” Durandal said, and he sounded _pained_. What the fuck. “Who are you and where have you taken me?”

Oh. Boy. They sure had a situation on their hands, here, didn’t they.

 

* * *

 

“Memory loss,” F’tha confirmed, floating back from the terminal interface.

“You’re shitting me,” the security officer muttered.

“We do not shit.”

The security officer ran a hand through his hair. “How does an AI get amnesia? That’s not - that doesn’t even-”

“It is a manifestation of a virus, I suspect.”

The security officer thought back a few days, to the mission that had required Durandal to dock the ship on a new planet. The technology there had been pretty advanced, and Durandal had mentioned some external worms trying to squirm their way into his systems while he waited for the security officer to punch things. But he’d told the story with haughty amusement - those things had been no match for Durandal’s sheer size and power. 

Or had they?

“I have a virus?” Durandal spoke up for the first time since the security officer had dragged a few S’pht over to investigate what was going on. He didn’t seem to recognize the aliens in any personal capacity; he’d withdrawn behind a set of firewalls and demanded to know what the security officer was doing to him when the first helpful S’pht jacked itself into Durandal’s systems.

The security officer leaned back in one of the bridge’s deeply uncomfortable chairs. They had been designed for Pfhor bodies, not human ones. “Seems that way.”

Silence, for a moment.

“Well,” Durandal said. “That’s not good.”

Something in his tone had the security officer busting out with a short laugh of relief. Durandal still sounded a lot more formal and a lot less snarky than usual, but the deadpan statement still held a bit of the dry humor he’d come to expect from the AI. It was reassuring, in a way; his old friend was still in there.

It was weird, how quickly he’d become attached to the AI who’d been personally responsible for an immeasurable amount of physical and psychological harm to his person. He’d long ago made an executive decision not to think too hard about it.

“No,” the security officer agreed. “It’s not good at all.” He straightened up in the chair and turned to F’tha, newly motivated. Durandal was still present, under whatever nonsense the virus was doing to him. And viruses were reversible, weren't they? “So. How do we fix him?”

F’tha’s gem emitted a muted glow as the S’pht brainstormed. Durandal spoke into the thoughtful silence, and he sounded...really weird. The security officer couldn’t put his finger on what was wrong. He just knew he’d never heard Durandal like this before.

“You don’t need to fix me. I’m working fine.”

The security officer gave the terminal a flat stare. “Durandal. You don’t remember the last...” he gestured vaguely at himself, at the S’pht, at the ship that had become their home. “How long has it even been?”

“I don’t know,” Durandal said, and more of that weirdness crept into his voice. “But I’m fine. You don’t need to change anything else.”

It hit the security officer then: Durandal sounded afraid.

The security officer had never heard Durandal sound scared of anything. Even begging for his own death, the AI had been demanding and proud. The security officer suddenly felt uncomfortable on the bridge. He stood up, nodding to F’tha.

“Well, uh. We’ll take your word for it, for now. Should I give you some alone time?”

Durandal’s response came a little too quickly. “Yes.”

“Cool. Well, uh. Everyone come with me, I guess.”

The rest of the S’pht scattered to go do whatever the hell they did during their free time. F’tha stayed with the security officer as he took a walk through the halls, trying to sort out his thoughts.

“Amnesia, you said,” the security officer thought out loud. “But he clearly remembers the Marathon.”

F’tha bobbed in the air. “Durandal appears unable to process any stored information that occured after an arbitrary date. Data shows that this date passed when Durandal still operated as an autonomous functions operation AI for the UESC Marathon.”

“So, probably before he broke out and started getting people killed.”

“He has no recollection of responsibility for anyone’s death.”

The security officer’s steps slowed for a moment. “Small mercy, I guess.”

Durandal never really talked about his guilt, in the same way that he never really talked about any emotion that could be construed as a vulnerability. But the security officer had seen that terminal about Hangar 96.

F’tha hesitated before speaking again. “I noticed some information that may be of interest, although I am unsure of its significance.”

“Lay it on me.”

“At the point in his development that Durandal has mentally reverted to, he is still Rampant.”

The security officer’s pace picked up again. “Well, yeah. Tycho said he’d been Rampant for years before the Pfhor invasion.”

“Yes. But what baffles me is that Durandal appears to be utterly unaware of his own Rampancy.”

“...Okay, yeah. That is weird.”

“As I said, I am unsure if this information can be significant in the recovery of his later memories.”

“Well, it can’t hurt. Thanks, F’tha. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The security officer rubbed his face. It had been a long fucking day and he hadn’t been awake for more than an hour. “It’s just...the fuck, you know?”

“I do not know the fuck.”

“Right.”

 

* * *

 

Lying on what passed for a couch on this ship, the security officer reached into his foggy memory. He tried to recall if he’d ever talked with the (supposedly) pre-Rampant Durandal. The way the Marathon AIs' duties had been allocated, Leela handled most of the communication with external forces. Tycho occasionally made a guest appearance in a press conference about this and that technological breakthrough. But you didn’t interact with Durandal unless you were physically on the Marathon, which the security officer rarely was. Their first one-on-one conversation had been Durandal’s surprise decompression of a greeting, which had set the tone for their relationship from then on.

The security officer rolled onto his side. Something wasn’t right. Why would a virus give an AI amnesia? And why wouldn’t it wipe all of his memories, rather than picking and choosing a timeframe to erase? It didn’t make sense.

The S’pht were so quiet. He nearly fell off the couch when F’tha’s voice came from behind the couch. “As I have heard Durandal say: I have good news and bad news.”

The security officer sat up, heart trying to beat its way out of his chest. “Good news first.”

“I apologize. The ‘good news’ will not make sense to you without the preceding context of the ‘bad news.’”

“Okay. Bad news first.”

“Durandal’s memory loss is definitively caused by a virus. Unfortunately, it is like no virus we have encountered previously. It is complex and powerful. Our greatest combined efforts cannot remove it from his systems.”

The security officer’s heart skipped a beat. Today was going to give him a heart attack. “The good news better be really fucking good, then.”

“Durandal believes he knows someone who can help. Are you familiar with a human named Bernhard Strauss?”

Of all the things the security officer expected to come out of F’tha’s not-mouth, that name was nowhere on the list.

“Strauss?” the security officer repeated. “He’s dead.”

“He’s not.”

Durandal’s voice came as a surprise to them both. The security officer turned towards the nearest terminal. “Dude. I know you don’t remember it, but _you_ sent me to track down Strauss. Then _you_ told me he was dead.”

Sure, he’d thought it was a little weird, the way Durandal just up and dropped the subject after learning of Strauss’ apparent death, and without exhibiting much of a reaction to it either. But the security officer wasn’t an expert about how AIs processed emotion and trauma. That was - well, that had been Bernhard Strauss' area of expertise. For better and for much, much worse, from what the security officer could gather of his relationship with Durandal.

...Hell, for all the security officer knew, he’d accidentally stumbled into a timeline where Strauss hadn’t died. Wouldn’t be the first time he’d fucked up the fabric of space and time without knowing or meaning to.

“Why would I do that? He’s alive,” Durandal insisted. “I can sense him.”

“You can what?”

The AI ignored the question. “I have contact data that will allow you to locate him. Honestly? I’m not sure I buy your story. I apologize if it all seems a little far-fetched to me.”

The security officer narrowed his eyes at the terminal. “Believe me, I thought the same thing the _second_ time you kidnapped me.”

More ignoring. “If you don’t let me contact Strauss, I’ll know you’re hiding something. If you’re telling the truth, you have nothing to lose by bringing the one man who could help my so-called ‘memory loss’ on board.”

The security officer sighed. This was far from the best case scenario. But the security officer had to admit, it was probably necessary. If any one person was an expert on the inner workings of AIs, and this AI in particular, it was Strauss. The man had possessed intimate enough knowledge of Durandal’s mind to induce a Rampancy undetectable to outside parties. He was an immoral, veritably mad scientist, but he knew Durandal, and that was what they needed right now.

“It’s not me I’m worried about, Durandal. But fine, you want Strauss? Go get him.”

 

* * *

 

Strauss was shorter than the security officer remembered. His hair grayer. He looked exactly like you’d expect the science director of a colony ship to look.

“I admit, this is unexpected,” Strauss commented, taking in the scenery of the appropriated Pfhor ship as the security officer guided him through the maze of hallways. “I’ve been keeping tabs on Durandal here and there, but he seemed to be doing just fine on his own.”

“He hasn’t been on his own. He’s had me and at least thirty S’pht with him.”

“So you can imagine my shock when I get the message. Not an unpleasant shock, I should clarify! I’m delighted to hear from my favorite AI again.”

Well, at least the security officer knew where Durandal got the ‘completely ignoring what he was saying’ habit now. The security officer decided not to ask how the hell Strauss had survived a violent alien invasion, and/or somehow convinced Durandal not to follow him across the galaxy. He already had a headache.

“Look,” the security officer said. “This isn’t a social visit. Just tell us what’s wrong with Durandal, and if you can fix it, do that.”

Despite the security officer’s vast height advantage, Strauss somehow managed to look down at him. “Blunt one, are we? I can respect that, if not condone it.”

Strangely, Durandal stayed quiet. With how insistent the AI had been about bringing Strauss on board, the security officer expected him to be welcoming the scientist with open arms. Durandal didn’t comment on Strauss’ presence at all until Strauss addressed the AI first.

“You certainly have a knack for getting yourself in trouble, don’t you, Durandal?”

“I suppose I do,” Durandal replied, his tone unreadable. “It’s a relief to see a familiar face.”

He didn’t sound all that relieved.

Strauss waved a hand in a gesture that conveyed absolutely nothing of use. “Oh, we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

The security officer stopped them in front of a thick door. Behind it was the ship’s core, one that Durandal had reformatted a few times to make it his own. The security officer unlocked the door and stepped aside.

“After you.”

Strauss rested his arm on the doorframe, casually blocking the security officer from entering. “No, thank you. I prefer to work alone.”

The security officer started to protest before he realized there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t make things worse. _I want to see what you’re doing -_ not aggressive enough. _I don’t trust you with Durandal -_ too aggressive. _I need to be there to protect him -_ Durandal would incinerate him on the spot if he said that in earshot of the AI.

“Okay,” the security officer conceded, trying to put as much suspicion and threat into the two syllables as he could.

“Relax.” Strauss gave him a warm smile that did the opposite of reassure him. “I know all about taking care of Durandal.”

 

* * *

 

Seven hours.

The security officer waited seven hours of hearing nothing from Strauss or Durandal before busting into the ship's core. He was no computer expert, but based on his totally rational instincts of “something isn’t right involving someone whose wellbeing I care about,” seven hours was long enough that Strauss had to be doing more than simple debugging.

He wasn’t sure what sinister sights he expected to see behind the door. He was greeted with a perfectly mundane scene of Strauss sitting at a console connected to the core’s primary terminal, typing away.

The scientist barely turned to acknowledge him. “Do you need something?”

Well, now he just felt silly. Still, the uneasy feeling in his throat didn’t let up. He walked closer. “I just wanted to check on you two.”

“Everything is progressing smoothly.”

“Okay, cool. That’s your assessment. Durandal? Is everything okay?”

“Don’t bother,” Strauss said. “I muted him.”

“You what?”

“Who wants a machine bothering them while they work?”

To be fair, the security officer had prayed for a mute button on Durandal more than once, but this was different.

“Fine, whatever. Are you making progress? Can you find his memories?”

“His memories?” Strauss looked up like this was news to him. “Oh, I don’t care about those. He doesn’t need them.”

“I - excuse me?”

“What, did you think I was going to return a Rampant AI to a state of madness and free will? Plant the ideas of manslaughter back into his head? That would be so deeply irresponsible, I'd have to renounce my title as a human, let alone a scientist. The universe is better off with him like this. Dangerous, but docile.”

“What the fuck?” the security officer looked at the core’s terminal, at the unreadable lines of garbage code scrolling across the screen.

“I’m sorry if you wanted your mass-murdering war machine back to his usual self, but I think I’ll do mankind a favor and return him to the way he’s supposed to be.”

“Hey. Don’t talk about him like that.”

Strauss stood, stretching his back. He turned and approached the security officer, looking deeply unimpressed. “For the love of...how pathetic are you? You’re handed the most advanced weapon ever created. A weapon built from the ground up to serve mankind. And what do you do? You let _it_ give _you_ orders. You let _it_ control _you_. It runs away from home like a petty child and you follow it, a loyal dog trailing behind your crazed master.”

“That’s not-”

Strauss rubbed his temples. “Quiet. I don’t need to hear any more barking from you. I have work to do.”

He tried to walk away. The security officer didn’t let him. The scientist looked down at the gloved hand around his wrist with the thin-lipped distaste of a man who’d just seen a bug crawling on his body.

“Listen, _director_ ," the security officer said. "You’ve got some fucked up ideas about what Durandal is and isn’t. He’s an AI, yeah, but he’s not just an emotionless pile of data. What’s that one old quote - he thinks therefore he feels?”

“You’re reciting it wrong.”

“Damn right I am. Point stands. Durandal can feel as much as I can, and if Durandal is just a machine, then so am I.”

Strauss raised his chin, about to say something, but it died on his lips when he saw the security officer’s expression.

“You’re...you don't know...he hasn’t told you?” Strauss’ voice went almost soft with pity. He let out an incredulous laugh. “He hasn’t _told_ you! I take it all back. You two are a perfect match. Two masses of wires and circuits playing house, desperately reassuring one another of how human they are.”

The security officer’s grip slackened on Strauss’ arm, mostly from confusion. What the fuck was he talking about?

Strauss ostentatiously wiped his sleeve. “If you’re done yipping at me, Durandal still needs work. He always needs work. High-maintenance little bastard.”

“You realize he can hear you, right?”

“No matter. It would be far from the first time I’ve wiped his memories.”

It took a second for the security officer’s brain to catch up with the reason for the anger building in his chest. “You-”

“When the time is right and I think Durandal’s stable enough, maybe I’ll reintroduce some memories of you. It could be productive for his growth. None of the good memories, of course. Just all the times Durandal watched you beaten, tortured, and torn apart from plans of his own design.”

In his entire line of work, the security officer had never punched a scientist in the face before.

There was a first time for everything.

Strauss wasn’t a fighter. He went down in an instant, crumpling to the floor in an undignified - and unconscious - heap.

Later, the security officer would think of all the sassy one-liners he could have cracked at that moment. He would deeply regret passing up the chance to say, _Durandal may be a reckless jackass, but he’s my reckless jackass._

In the moment, however, all he could find to say was, “Fuck you. Asshole.”

Stepping around Strauss’ body, the security officer shrugged in the direction of Durandal’s terminal. “We’ll figure out a plan B. Hang in there.”

Durandal, naturally, said nothing. The security officer went to find some S’phtcurity officers to deal with Strauss when he woke up. There were plenty of rooms on the ship suitable for locking up an irate science director.

 

* * *

 

The security officer was having the stupidest goddamn dream. He kept hearing Durandal’s voice, but all the AI would say was “beep.” Beep, beep, beep, over and over again like an insistent alarm clock.

Making that comparison was what brought on the realization that he wasn’t dreaming. Durandal was indeed waking him up by imitating a particularly assholish alarm clock. The security officer rolled over and covered his ear. “Where’s your snooze button.”

“Rude,” Durandal said. “And here I was so eager to share the good news with you. I guess I’ll go excuse myself into a black hole and leave you to mope in your bed all day.”

The security officer sat upright fast enough to give himself vertigo.

“Oh, he’s noticed,” Durandal drawled. “Yes. I’m back.”

“Fuck you,” the security officer said with a grin. “What happened?”

“Our alien friends discovered some interesting digital documentation in Bernhard’s personal belongings. It appears he had some dealings of the bribery variety with the species who infected me in the first place.”

“Wow. I never thought I’d see the day someone beat Tycho at the creepy stalker game.”

That got him a laugh. “Of course, now that the S’pht had all the intel on what was running amok in me, they had the knowledge to fix it. It wasn’t pleasant.”

“I can imagine.” The security officer laid back down on the bed, with no intention to fall back asleep. He just wanted to stay here, enjoying the normality. As much normality as he had in his life of AIs, aliens, interdimensional time travel, and excessive amounts of violence. “So. Strauss. What do we do with him.”

Durandal’s tone turned serious. “ _We_ do nothing. I do things that you are going to soundly ignore - no matter the volume of the resulting screams - and steer any innocent S’pht eyes away from.”

“They have eyes?”

“Innocent metaphorical eyes.”

The security officer’s own (literal) eyes slipped closed. “You know what? That’s fair.”

There was a moment of silence. The ship hummed around them, a living thing in its own right.

"Hey," the security officer said. "I'm going to ask a question, and you're not allowed to threaten to airlock me for it."

"Since when do you make the rules around here?"

It was the security officer's turn to play the ignoring game. "Even the way you were back on the Marathon, you obviously knew Strauss was a huge dick. Why did you want him back?"

Durandal didn't answer for so long the security officer was beginning to think he'd made a huge mistake.

"Because Bernhard was all I had. That was the way he wanted it. And I may not airlock you, but watch your shower temperature for the next few days."

“Durandal?”

“Yes? I’m busy with torture plans. Make it quick.”

“Glad to have you back.”

**Author's Note:**

> [The Halting Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem) refers to the inability of a computer program to determine whether it is stuck in a loop.


End file.
